


Winter Ghosts

by maraudings



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Political Jon, Post-Canon, Unresolved Emotional Tension, listen... that's the only thing that makes sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-03 01:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19453480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maraudings/pseuds/maraudings
Summary: She can still see him atop his horse, can still see him adjust his cloak before turning to send her a final farewell. A raised hand and the ghost of a smile. And then he had left, their banners streaming behind him. Left for a queen from the across the sea in a desperate final effort to save them all.His grip around her tightens, she feels as his chin buries into her neck, and she wants to fall apart.





	Winter Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> they did jon so dirty in that finale. the entire season wasn't great for him but that last episode... oooh boy.
> 
> i started this after the finale aired but then had to take a couple days because it made me too upset. and then that turned into a month and a half. and even now there are still parts of this i do not like but then i remembered that two men actually got paid to write those six episodes of television and i'm doing this for free.
> 
> title is from winter ghosts by jbm.

The morning is quiet, quieter than Sansa remembers it ever being in the citadel.

Arya has said very little since leaving the Dragonpit, and Bran is as stoic as usual. Between the three of them the only sounds are boots on stone and the rattle of the chair as they make their way down to the harbor.

Gone are the shouts from merchants, the ringing of bells from the sept. Ash still lingers like a film over the city, the smell of it still ripe in the air. Not that the people of King’s Landing need the reminder of what happened—it’s plain on their faces. No one along the route through the city speaks louder than a murmur. Their heads are bent low as they attempt to go about their daily business, acting like the hollowed-out buildings are normal. Like the large piles of rubble had always been there. Like flinching at the sudden flapping of a bird’s wings is a reaction they’ve always had.

Sansa has to wonder what it was all for.

The three of them turn a corner and the waiting ships come into view on the water below. A lone gull cries out overhead.

Arya brings Bran’s chair to a stop once they reached the quay, her brother looking out to the water with his even expression. The harbor looks the same to her. She could put Shae in Arya’s silence if she tried hard enough, the pair of them staring out at the ships and imagining the better lives of their passengers to appease the parts of her childhood that had still remained to her. She had stood in the gardens overlooking this very quay, tears falling as she watched another ship from another time ferry them away for good.

The waiting rowboat slaps against the stone with each wave.

They are sending him back. Back to the wall, back to take the black. And Sansa had tried to stop it, tried to argue that he did what he had to in order to save them all. But no one listened. They took their vote, the new lords of Westeros, and the matter was settled and done with.

A breeze passes, carrying with it the scent of rotting fish and sulfur. Sansa looks up at the skeletal outlines of the Red Keep. Somehow in its ruined state she still can’t bring herself to feel anything but contempt in the rare moments she allows herself to set eyes upon it. When she was a girl she thought the keep was a wonder, that she would never see anything as grand or as inspiring. It was the sight of songs, tall and regal. But that was before. The rooms she had been kept in are little more than rubble now, yet the feelings remain. Her father, her brother, her mother, her wolf.

She hates it, the city that took everything from her.

“We should have tried harder.” Arya speaks to the ground. The words bring a bitter taste to Sansa’s mouth, and though she knows her sister isn’t looking for a response she finds she can’t bring one anyway. She is right. Of the multitude of things they should have done differently, fighting harder for Jon is perhaps the one Sansa regrets the most.

The sound of boots against the stone grows from behind them. She sees the black cloaks of the watch first, their dark against the sandstone of the seawall an imposing sight. And then there is Jon.

He looks all at the once the worst and best she has ever seen him. The exhaustion plain on his features even from this distance, his hair wild around his face, but nonetheless he is alive. _Alive._

But it’s when he stops before her and cannot seem to be able to look her in the eye that the relief at seeing him wanes. She had taken a risk in telling his secret to Tyrion. A decision born of fear and desperation, motivated only by her need to keep him safe. She thinks on everything that has happened since, everything that may have or may not have been born from that moment and wishes desperately that he had been spared from it all. “I wish there had been another way. Can you forgive me?”

She can’t read his expression as he looks at her, but it’s in the way that his eyes eventually dip low that her throat constricts because he doesn’t, he doesn’t forgive her. He can’t even look at her when he finally speaks. “The North is free thanks to you.”

“But they lost their King.” She doesn’t know how else to tell him that everything she did was for him. That she sat in the council and declared the North’s independence in the same spirit as when they took it back together. The victory feels hollow now, knowing that she must face it alone.

Like he knows exactly what she means, he finally looks at her, the faintest hint of a smile in his eye. “Ned Stark’s daughter will speak for them. She’s the best they could ask for.”

_Oh._

Her eyes sting as she steps forward and wraps her arms around him.

He smells different, that is the first thing she notices. Of ash and dust. The stale scent of being locked away. But underneath everything he is still there. Jon is still here. He wears the second cloak she made him after the first had been torn from him, the one he tried to refuse but accepted nonetheless. He had left south too quickly for her to have the twin direwolves pressed into the leather. She grabs at the furs, pulling him closer but not close enough.

She can still see him atop his horse, can still see him adjust his cloak before turning to send her a final farewell. A raised hand and the ghost of a smile. And then he had left, their banners streaming behind him. Left for a queen from the across the sea in a desperate final effort to save them all.

_You never really came back to me, did you?_

His grip around her tightens, she feels as his chin buries into her neck, and she wants to fall apart. 

She’s reluctant to let him go, but she watches and listens as he says his goodbyes to Arya and Bran. Watches and listens as yet another one of them makes to break from the pack. Watches and listens as Jon is told that he was right where he was supposed to be and it just _isn’t fair_.

But there is nothing she can do.

There’s a moment right before he turns to leave them. He looks to her, and she looks to him, and she wonders how this can be peace when it still feels like she has more to fight for.

The three of them watch until the ends of his cloak disappear into the boat, as he is rowed to the waiting ship, as the anchor comes up and it sails out of the harbor. And they stay like that, together, and Sansa can’t help but think that it could be the last time for a very long while.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks her sister once the ship is out of sight.

For a moment Arya is quiet. Then, “I didn’t know how to.”

Sansa looks at her, her little sister, who plunged a dagger into the heart of death, who’s face is still streaked with tears from saying goodbye. There are a lot of things she doesn’t know how to tell her, either.

The last of the Starks turn from the water and start back up the path.

-x-

The morning of her coronation, she thinks of Robb.

Robb, who called their banners and took up a cause that was centuries in the making. Robb, who gave his life fighting for the North to be free. Robb, who would lift her beneath her arms and spin in the Godswood, the pair of them laughing. Robb, her brother.

Her mother comes to her as she brushes out her hair. She decides to keep it long, undone, and knows that if Catelyn Stark were here she would run her fingers through the length of it and ask her if she could run the brush through the silky strands just a few times more.

She adjusts the fur cape of her dress and her thoughts go to Rickon. Little Rickon, who was swathed in a fur just like it when she first met him, when his hand was hardly big enough to wrap completely around her finger. Rickon who would clutch at the dark furs of Shaggydog before the great hearth. Rickon who would grab at the legs of his family like they were his only tether to this world.

The red of the embroidery down her sleeves catches in the light of the hearth and she pictures a young boy with curious eyes and a restlessness so engrained it would take him up the roofs of the tallest towers. Bran is south now, but as the leaves of the weirwood glint against the pale blue fabric she likes to think that his eye is trained north.

In the turns of the hallways is Arya, always underfoot. Somewhere out on the sea her sister must stand at the helm of a ship, her own skinny Needle strapped to her belt and adventure in her heart. But here in the keep Arya ducks in and out of the shadows, a tiny echo of her laughter there to accompany the sounds of her sister’s small feet against the stone.

Theon Greyjoy, ward of Winterfell, brushes by her in a draft of cold winter air. She can feel it in her hair, just as she still feels the weight of his hand in hers. Feel the metal of the pin she had strapped to his armor. The fresh air calms her, like the still sea before a storm.

She takes a pause just before turning into the Great Hall, when the low rumblings of the lords who wait for her within reach her ears, and it’s her father that she reflects on. The honorable Ned Stark. She walks the length of the hall, feeling more than seeing the lords kneel to her, and hopes that her honor is enough.

The crown is placed on her head, and she thinks of him.

Of his face when he turned to her as they crowned him King in the North in this very hall after they took back their home. Of the way his astonishment laid bare filled her with such pride and love that she could hardly stand to hold his eye. Of the very moment she had seen him again at Castle Black, standing at the railing as if a vision from a dream. Of his arms around her, his nose in her neck. Of the quay at King’s Landing. Of a ship, sailing further and further away.

_“Where will you go?”  
_ _"Where will_ we _go?”_

There is no one for her to turn to so she stares ahead. Her bannermen take out their swords, hold them high, and declare Sansa Stark for all to hear.

_The Queen in the North._

-x-

The wars may be done with, but the hardness of winter still looms.

Sansa keeps busy enough the first couple months. The keeps to the north need rebuilding, hundreds are still displaced, and food rationings need delegating. Yet somehow they all make it work well enough. She comes to enjoy her morning briefings on their progress, finding pleasure in watching the North she loves so much be rebuilt and reborn piece by piece. Laughter returns to her halls. What feasts she can offer are accompanied by songs, old and new.

Winterfell is still a project of its own. There are still nights where her feet take her down hallways with blown out windows, past doors that have long since been hacked to pieces. She spends what little free time she has wandering the broken ramparts and surveying the remains of battle, remembering back to its days of spring. At times it’s the only thought that keeps her going. Every update from the masons is as good as gold in her eyes.

But as the stones go up and the people slowly trickle out, the ghosts of Winterfell become easier to feel.

She is surrounded by people every day—as Queen her most important duty is her people. They come to her with problems and she hears them. She stitches tunics and furs and delivers them into Winter Town herself. She sends out open invitations for dinners at her table for those who are still struggling through the winter. But it’s when her steps are the only thing she hears echoing back at her in the halls that she starts to feel it. The ache beneath her ribs, the longing for times that have long passed and ghosts who have long gone.

Sansa has known loneliness before. She has known what it feels like to be cut off from family, to hope desperately to be reunited with a friendly face. But this is an isolation she has never felt before. An emptiness. Despite the freedom for her people, despite her crown, despite the very breath that fills her lungs, the hollowness of her life is gnawing.

_What is it you want that you do not have?_

-x-

The ravens become her true friends.

She receives word from Arya now and again—sometimes once a week, others once a month. A couple of times there are a series of letters all at once. Her sister writes of her adventures and her new discoveries and all Sansa can think to write back is a reminder that there is always a place for her at Winterfell. But she can picture her sister happy, wherever she may be, and despite the distance it feels like enough.

Bran has ravens sent on a regular basis, but his notes are more of news for their allies in the North than they are about his personal well-being for his sister’s peace of mind. The King of the Six Kingdoms has a keen interest in strengthening their trade agreements, that much is always clear. But sometimes her brother still calls out through the ink. A small turn of phrase, something tongue-in-cheek that is enough to reassure her that he is alive and at peace in the south. 

Nothing comes from the wall.

It’s a reality that does not surprise her yet it cuts all the same. She supposes there isn’t much to report from farther north these days anyway—the wildlings are considered the North’s allies and for the most part able to come and go at their leisure and the threat of the White Walkers is past. Once a steward wrote to her on behalf of the Lord Commander, requesting supplies which she readily gave. Otherwise, silence.

She thinks about writing him herself, enough times that the parchment comes out and the quill is dipped. But she never makes the two meet. She never feels brave enough to put the words down. What could he do with the regrets that eat at her? What could he do about the empty spaces in her life? They are her burdens to bear, not his.

Silence it is, then.

Every day Sansa sits in the godswood, where she can hear the gentle rustle of the trees and feel the stillness of the snow. She takes her father’s old spot underneath the weirwood and likes to think that he would not mind. She still does not pray, not really. She thinks about her family, the dead and the gone. Their names become the only prayer she can stand.

_Father and Mother and Robb and Theon and Arya and Bran and Rickon and Jon._

It’s where she finds herself the morning Maester Wolkan comes to her, her mantra interrupted by the gentle clinking of his chain moving with his hurried steps.

“Your Grace.” He holds a scroll out for her as he approaches, expression guarded. She takes it from him with a slight hesitation. 

Jon Snow has been pardoned.

The King in the South writes to inform her of his supposed difficult decision regarding the sentence of a queenslayer but she finds that the carefully chosen words begin to blur together. He is free. Sansa rises to her feet, the red leaves of the weirwood reaching down and brushing against her hair.

Somewhere above a raven caws.

-x-

Months pass, and nothing changes.

There’s no word from the far north. Nothing from Castle Black. Nothing from Bran on the subject either, his scrolls quickly returning to focus on progress updates on the rebuilding efforts. Some nights Sansa thinks she may have hallucinated that entire morning, yet the scroll bearing the news she keeps in the drawer of her vanity is wrinkled enough for her to know that she did not.

There are no ravens telling of Jon Snow making his journey back south. No sightings of him anywhere in her kingdom. He must have gone further north, she realizes. Or even stayed at the wall. Why would he want to come here? There is nothing waiting for him at Winterfell besides her, the one who helped send him to take the black for a second time. He doesn’t want to see her.

There is a different kind of acceptance to that, one that cuts far deeper than anything else ever could, one that reminds her of a little girl alone in the Red Keep realizing that no one was going to come for her.

And yet…

She can still see him astride his horse next to her, still feel him close as they waited just outside Winterfell, the pair of them on the verge of a battle they would fight for their family and for each other. She can still feel the press of his lips at her forehead as gentle as the snow that fell around them. She can still hear the quiet rumble of his laugh, the low tremors of his words as they sit together in front of the hearth.

She had already come to terms with the reality of never seeing him again. Bran had once told him that he was exactly where he needed to be—perhaps it is not such a leap to assume that this is where she needed to be. In her home, alone. The thought eats at her but she realizes she had accepted it long ago.

Perhaps he doesn’t know. Perhaps the raven got lost and the news of his pardon never reached him. She could write to him and let him know herself. But she won’t. Because he already knows of Bran’s decision. He has already left Castle Black, off to disappear into the wilderness for good, off to find Arya in whichever corner of the globe she currently resides.

She can feel more than see a cruel smirk hidden behind a wine goblet. Of course he got the raven. Where ever he went her scroll would not find him. They would be words for a man who had already moved on without her.

Arya is her favorite answer to Jon’s absence. At least then they would be together. Some of them should be, at least. She pictures two dark heads huddled over a table in a ship’s quarters, the pair of them charting out their course across the seas. She clutches that image to her. It is enough.

It had to be.

-x-

Almost a year to the day of her coronation, a rider is spotted.

Sansa is in the library when she is told and assumes it’s the messenger from Last Hearth. They had only recently made significant progress on its restoration and the keep had finally been inhabitable for the last couple months. Progress in the fringes of the northern kingdom has been slower than she’d like but it has proven difficult to focus on every project at once when the North scarcely has enough skilled craftsmen and laborers as it is.

She stands from her seat and smooths down the front of her dress, readies herself to give a warm reception. _If it’s food they need, there isn’t much to spare—_

A howl cuts through her thoughts, through her heart.

_Ghost._

She doesn’t remember how she got to the courtyard. She doesn’t remember leaving the library, brushing past her confused lady’s maid as her legs carry her unsteadily through the corridors. Yet somehow she emerges into the yard just as the rider and his horse appear through the gate. A light snow has begun, the flakes suspended in the air as if from a dream. It couldn’t be, could it?

She had only let herself imagine this moment when the fires had burned down low and the shadows ate at the stone. He would appear in the Great Hall one morning, clad in black and flanked by a white wolf. Sometimes he found her in the Godswood, his gorget emblazoned with direwolves. Sometimes he kneeled, sometimes he held her face in his hands. But never did she once think of how her heart might seize beneath her ribs. Never did she think the sight of him would steal the chill from her bones. But it does, and Jon Snow is here.

His hair tied back, an apprehension plain on his face even from this distance, but nonetheless he is here. _Jon is here_.

He hasn’t look at her yet, not really.

No one in the courtyard speaks as he dismounts. No one moves, save the stable boy who takes the reins from him and looks to his queen for direction. But Sansa can’t give it, can’t do anything but stare.

The cloak she made him is still draped across his shoulders. 

He looks to the small, curious crowd that had gathered at his arrival. Looks to the rebuilt walls, the replaced walkways. He’s avoiding her. Uncertainty bubbles within Sansa the longer he delays. _Look at me, please_.

And then he does.

She can see the same pain from the quay, the same hopelessness. But there is something else there, a kind of warmth she had only ever seen and felt years ago when a similar snowfall melted into her hair. It is entirely familiar, entirely Jon. Her breath escapes her.

He makes to drop to one knee, but before he can she closes their distance and her arms are thrown around his neck and it’s almost like he never left at all.

Almost.

-x-

Sansa is staring at him. She realizes this not two seconds after he takes the seat opposite her by the hearth but can’t bring herself to stop. She wants to rememorize every inch of him.

What surprises her the most is that he looks almost the same as she remembers—hair is about the same length, beard near to how it had been. The scar at his brow still creeps towards his eye, expression still as guarded as it had always been. The only thing that seemed to change were the clothes, save for the cloak which has already been removed and draped over another chair. He wears quilted armor in a deep grey—plain, a little threadbare around the seams and fraying at the ends but nice enough all the same. But something has changed. There’s something in the way he carries himself, the way he hunches over with his elbows braced on his knees that is… off. It’s like staring at a reflection of him in a muddy waters. It's Jon, but not quite.

He speaks first, and she’s thankful for it. She doesn’t know where to begin.

“The keep looks almost as it was,” his eyes are warm when he looks up at her. “You’ve done a good job, Sansa.”

She smiles at the cup in her hands. “Thank you, Jon.”

“I mean it. From what I’ve been hearing you’re the best ruler the North could’ve asked for. Your people sing your praises all the way to the wall.”

She takes a sip, changes the subject: “How is the Watch faring these days? The ravens are few and far between.” Jon’s eyes dip to the floor.

“Things are quiet. There’s not much to protect the realm from and not many to do the protecting if it needed to be done, but they’re trying to be useful in other ways. The first few months were spent helping to resettle the free folk.” He rubs his jaw as he talks, gaze set into the fire. “They’re so few now, compared to how they were, but there’s hope. The trade agreements and open passage south help. Thank you, for doing that.”

Sansa smooths a crease out in her skirt. “It makes sense. There are fewer of us as well; plenty of land to be farmed and not enough people to do it. I thought the free passage would upset at least a couple of the lords but for the most part they’re in agreement.” She remembers the lack of surprise in the room when she announced it, the silent agreement that it was time. “Everyone seems weary of fighting, we should take full advantage of that while we can.”

He nods. “Do you hear from Arya?”

“Occasionally,” Sansa says, “though it’s been a while since her last raven. In truth I’m surprised she has time to write as much as she does, or that she is even able at all. But I do like hearing what she’s up to, even if it does terrify me to think about her out there alone.”

He gives a hum of agreement, the two of them falling into a shared silence. She traces the rim of her cup with her finger. “How long are you staying?”

She sees him shift in his seat, hears him clear his throat. “Not very long. A few days, if you can bear it. Then I should be back.”

His answer does not surprise her, and yet all the same she must prevent herself from reacting. A hum of acknowledgement is all she allows herself, all she trusts. He is free to leave his prison yet he still chooses to stay. She might laugh had she not spent night after night fearing this very thing.

And why would he stay after what she did?

She can feel them dancing around the her, the dragon queen. A log pops in the fireplace and the sparks rain upwards, the heat pressing against her skin. She wants to be free of it, once and for all. She has to look away as the question surfaces.

“Do you forgive me?”

He takes his eyes off the stone hearth and looks at her. The fire lights the dark of his eyes. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

_But there is_ , Sansa thinks. He had said he would protect her but she could not do the same. She looks to her lap, shame filling her. “I often think about what else I could have said or could have done that would have let you stay, let you be free. It felt like I couldn’t do anything but watch it all happen.” _Again._ The light whisper of a sword cutting through air still echoes in her ears. _Watch it all happen again._

“There is nothing you could have done, Sansa.”

In a life long gone, the sentiment could have given her peace. But now she thinks of that emptiness inside her, the one that can’t be filled no matter how much she throws herself into her duties. She lets her eyes return to his, lets herself take the sight of him in before she asks, “Why are you here, Jon? Why now?”

It’s his turn to pull his gaze away, focusing on the floor. “I don’t know. When I got Bran’s pardon... I didn’t think it made a difference. There are many things I regret, many things I still…” He clears his throat. “My role in what happened, in everything that happened, is something so unforgivable that I couldn’t even face you. I couldn’t bring myself to come back here.”

“Jon—”

“I’m not a Stark,” he says, cutting her off. The corners of his mouth make an attempt to turn upwards and the sight shatters her already fractured heart. “I never have been. The wall is the only place I belong.”

She’s shaking her head the moment the words fall from his mouth. “Do you truly believe that?” After everything that’s happened, does he still truly believe that? “When I called our banners and marched what was left of the Northern forces south, I did it for you. I did it to bring you home. The North is your home. Winterfell is your home.”

Sansa watches as a shuddering breath courses through him, hoping that the truth of what she said is enough to reach him. His home had always been here. Even after everything that has been said and done, Jon Snow belongs here. The truth of it has shadowed her through the past year, fitting itself into every crook and crevice of her life. Jon Snow belongs here.

“I did it for you, too.” 

It was so quiet he might not have spoken at all. Her brows knit. “Jon?”

There’s a sadness in his hint of a smile when he looks at her. “When I brought her here, when I bent the knee. I did it for you.”

Two dragons soaring overhead, their calls echoing off the stone walls of her home. Sweeping arcs of fire decimating a field of horrors. Sansa doesn’t know what to say. Jon’s gaze is both heavy and soft. Her chest tightens. 

“You told me once, long ago, to be smarter,” he continues, “and I tried. I said what I had to, did what I had to, to get her and her dragons and her armies here. All that mattered was giving us the best chance against the army of the dead. I wasn’t thinking about after, it didn’t matter to me. But I knew what she was. I watched as she flew off to slaughter the Lannister army, I heard as she had to be talked out of burning down King’s Landing. I had to ignore it. We needed her help. None of us would have survived without her dragons, without her armies.”

Sansa looks down, the truth of it still impossible to ignore. She had never been ignorant of how dire their chances had been before the dragons came north. She had never been too proud to understand how they needed her.

“I worked to keep her contented, to keep her in the fight, to make her believe that my loyalties laid with her. There wasn’t a plan for after. Maybe I didn’t expect to survive to have to deal with it. I don’t know. The only thing that mattered was keeping the peace long enough to get through the battle. I knew she wasn’t here because it was the right thing, I knew she still did not understand that the fight was hers as much as it was ours.”

_Do you have any faith in me at all?_

Sansa feels her heart seize. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

The breath he is holding leaves him through his nose, his eyes closing for just a moment. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell any of you. I couldn’t risk more people being involved. She already resented you for not submitting to her the moment she rode through the gates, I wasn’t about to give her another reason to…”

He does not finish but the implication of his words makes her tense. She remembers the sight of the dragons overhead, remembers feeling the heat of their fire on that long, terrible night.

Remembers the ice in a dragon queen’s stare.

Jon’s voice brings her back; “I should have told you. But at the time I thought it was the only way. I knew what she craved, I knew all she wanted was to feel loved, no matter how it came about. So I let her see it. But when Sam told me who my mother is,” a bitter laugh catches and dies in his throat, “when he told me the truth of my parentage, I couldn’t… All I felt was terror. It was one more thing that could set her off and ruin it all.”

“Then why tell her?”

She’s surprised to see a small smile appear. “Call it my honor, I suppose. We were likely to die. And part of me hoped she might take it better. But it was a fool’s hope.”

Sansa does not have to ask the exact reaction—she knew enough from what resulted. “I never understood why you wanted to keep the truth about your birth hidden,” she admits. “I didn't understand why you could not see it, that there would come a point when it could be the only thing that kept you alive."

He’s quiet for a moment. “It didn’t matter. I didn’t care what happened to me when I left for King’s Landing. I didn’t care that I might never step foot in the North again—it was worth it, to me. To keep her away from Winterfell, to prove that I was not a threat.”

“She never would have let you leave,” Sansa says. “No matter what you said, you were still a threat. Your claim was stronger. You wouldn’t have been more than a prisoner if she kept you alive.”

Jon nods. “I know. And I knew it then.”

A prisoner at the wall, or a prisoner to a dragon queen. Sansa takes him in, the man who cared so little for his own happiness. “So you followed her south thinking you would never come back.”

He breaks their gaze, staring down at the floor. And all Sansa can think of is him atop his horse, of his sad smile, of the emptiness she felt watching him go.

“I told Tyrion about who you were because I cared. Because I knew that she would have done it. One wrong move and you would have been dead.” She fights to keep her voice steady. The pressure in her chest grows unbearable, and she knows it has to give soon. “I know I promised, I know you didn’t want it to get out, but you have to know that it was never about putting you on that throne. It was always about saving you. If that was the way it had to happen, then so be it.”

Jon leans forward in his seat, resting his head in his hands, and if her heart wasn’t already in pieces the sight alone would have done it. Without thinking she moves out of her seat and comes to kneel at his side, her cup forgotten on the stone floor. The wool of his doublet is rough against her hands as she lays them on the crook of his elbow. “I am sorry you had to go through that,” she says, voice not much louder than a whisper. “I’m sorry it was you, in the end. If I could spare you from carrying it around, I would. But it means that you’re alive today. And for that I will not apologize. I cannot.”

He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look up, but the gentle shake of his shoulders tells her enough. So she sits there with him, her knees pressed against the stone. A log shifts and crackles in the hearth.

“She was going to kill you.”

Sansa looks up at him. He moves his hands enough so that she can see his face. It’s tear-streaked, exhausted, and she isn’t sure she has ever seen anything as devastating.

“When it was over she spoke to her armies, and I couldn’t understand her but I heard ‘Winterfell.’ I heard it. She was going to do it again, she was going to raze this all to the ground. She would have come after you for what you did. I knew it. I had to make a choice. So I chose.”

_I’ll protect you, I promise._

Her heart is in her throat, her breath catching. “Jon—” But he keeps going.

“I will not apologize for that either—to anyone. I killed her in cold blood to save you. To save Arya and Bran, to save everyone. But I was the reason she was a threat in the first place. I should have listened to you, should have tried harder to stop her from killing all those people. I was the one who brought it to that point.” He moves to turn away, but Sansa guides him back to her with a gentle hand at his cheek.

“No, Jon. What she did was not your fault. Do you understand me? There was nothing you could have said or done to prevent any of it.” His eyes search hers in disbelief, red-rimmed and wild. But if she had to stay here all night until he understood she would do so. “You say you’re not a Stark, but you _are_. You did what needed to be done, despite how terrible it had to be, despite what it meant for you.”

He sags, face leaning into her hand. “I can’t,” he whispers. “I can’t be a Stark.”

“Why not?” 

Jon turns away, her fingers brushing over his jaw. Why can’t he see how much he means to her? Why can’t he see how good he is? Why can’t he see what she sees? He does not deserve it, any of it. He never had. And still he will not allow himself peace. Still he chooses to punish himself.

In her mind, a snow is falling. Over the yard at Castle Black. Beyond the gaping mouth of a tent. Down over the parapets, the flakes catching in his hair.

They will never get any of it back, will they?

She leans forward and presses her forehead against his temple. “Please stay.” Her voice comes as hardly a whisper, not trusting herself to speak any louder. “Please don’t leave again.”

“ _Sansa_.” It sounds like a sigh.

She wants to tell him how alone she feels. How every day she wakes in an empty castle and sits at an empty table and wonders if she is being punished, too. She wants to tell him how she misses Arya and Bran so much that it hurts. How she misses Father and Mother and Robb and Theon and Rickon. And him. She misses him. But it wouldn’t be enough.

Her eyes open at the brush of his thumb against her cheek, surprised by the tears she feels being wiped away. His breath fans her face, the light scent of ale offering a strange sense of calm. But it’s his eyes that get her again—they always have. Dark and soft and so full of tenderness that she imagines for once she might let it in. For once she might give in. But she can’t, can she?

The pressure snaps.

He sees it instantly, pulling her against him and wrapping his arms around her. And so she cries. For Jon. For her. For everyone else they have lost. Her knees ache where they press against the stone. She grips the leather across his shoulders as if it is the only thing keeping her upright, face pressed against the side of his neck. The warmth from him would be almost enough to soothe her if she did not know he is as good as gone. Closer but not close enough. 

“I’m sorry, Sansa,” he says into her ear, voice thick. “I’m sorry I left you here alone for months. I’m sorry I let you believe that I betrayed you. I’m sorry for not coming back the moment I knew that I could. I’m sorry. Sansa, I’m so sorry.”

_Forgive me_ , she implored him once in a castle built against the ice. He had smiled at that, filling her with more warmth than any fire ever could. _All right, I forgive you_. It had been that simple, once, but even still Sansa knows he had been forgiven the moment she heard Ghost’s howl echo off the stone.

One day, a long time ago, he rode out through the gates of Winterfell in the hopes of giving them all a chance to live. And perhaps it was not until this day that he came back.


End file.
